W4 2023 | Weekly Round-up
Happy Lunar New Year; Mass shootings in the Asian-American community; Will Smith
For those who celebrated Lunar New Year this weekend, I wish you health, prosperity and good fortune in the year ahead. And for those who don’t celebrate it, you should! It’s a second chance to restart the year. ;)
Content note: In this newsletter, I do address the recent mass shootings in the US in the “Things I’m thinking about” section and reference domestic violence in the Asian and Asian-American community, so if you’re already feeling overwhelmed/sad, I invite you to stop reading and come back to this when you have the emotional capacity. You may also want to consider this processing tool built by a teacher and advocate that I know personally.
Things I’ve launched:
Hundreds of handmade jiao zi (chinese dumplings) for lunar new year! With my sister’s family and 3 other friends & their families, we wrapped 4 lbs of pork, 1 kilogram (2.2 lbs) of flour, and untold quantities of ginger, cabbage, scallions, garlic and soy sauce! We made (and ate!) several hundred dumplings.
The next morning, I packaged the frozen leftovers into individual portions - we still had 137 dumplings leftover!
This was especially poignant for me because growing up, my grandmother would do this for our family on special Saturdays. It was a rare moment where all three generations came together around an activity, especially one that was cultural.
One of the gifts of sabbatical is the energy and space I have in my life to host others; to be intentional about creating space for joy and connection.
It’s not that I don’t host events in my “normal” life - but I’m usually exhausted by the weekends, unlikely to tackle something as “big” as hosting a multi-family party!
Things I’m thinking about:
Mass shootings in Monterey Park, Half Moon Bay, & Oakland.
I’ve been emotionally numb the last few days, as a series of mass shootings in the US have felt especially proximate, both physically and emotionally.
I called my dad on Saturday morning to tell him about hosting a Lunar New Year at my house - and he was excited as he values his Chinese/Taiwanese heritage and has felt sad that his children - specifically me - are more American than Chinese. He told me about their plans for the weekend: to go later that day to a big lunar new year festival in a nearby town, Monterey Park, and to take my grandmother on Sunday to church, to her favorite Chinese restaurant, and to visit my grandfather’s grave.
On Sunday morning, I woke up to news of a mass shooting in Monterey Park, seemingly connected to the lunar new year festival, and my heart froze -
When had I last heard from them? I’d sent them videos from last night’s lunar new year party -
Had they responded?
My eyes kept reading and, to my relief, the shooting was much later in the evening, at 10 PM at a ballroom dance venue. I’d heard from my parents before then. They are always home by 7 PM and would have left much earlier.
And in my text messages (which I hadn’t read yet), one from my dad an hour earlier that morning to the family text thread:
“Happy Lunar New Year to you all. We are doing ok and will go to church with Grandma Hsia today. (Please note we were in Monterey Park during the day yesterday for celebration, for short lunch break. Please pray for late last night mass shooting victims family in Monterey Park).” (sic)
Throughout the day, as news unfolded, I monitored it but I was mostly relieved that my parents were safe. I didn’t cry; I didn’t grieve; I was numb.
On Monday, as news about the Monterey shooting was still unfolding (we learned the assailant was likely an older Asian man; that the shooting was likely personal; that most of the victims were in their 60s and 70s), news broke of another mass shooting in Half Moon Bay, a beachside community about 45 minutes from my house. I’ve driven to Half Moon Bay at least once a year (sometimes more) in the last 2 decades of going to Stanford and living in the Bay Area - it’s one of the closest public beaches to me.
This time, a farming community impacted. Another Asian man in his 60s. Younger than my father, closer in age to my uncle.
Monday evening, as I was in bed, I opened the news to read about another shooting in Oakland, the city across the Bay. A gas station. Oakland, a city I’ve been spending more time in recently. Oakland, where friends live.
Monterey Park. 11 dead, 9 injured.
Half Moon Bay. 7 dead, 1 injured.
Oakland. 1 dead, 7 injured.
I’m still numb.
And I’m horrified that I’m numb.
America has a gun problem.
Nicholas Kristof does a better job summarizing this than I could: “A smarter way to reduce gun deaths.”
It’s a long article, but read it. But the most important graph for me was the one showing gun sales over the last 2 decades.
We have so many guns in circulation right now. People feel afraid and guns are somehow their answer.
And in the same way that alcoholics don’t keep alcohol at home, there are too many angry, sad and desperate people who shouldn’t have guns at home.
—
And, the Asian American community has a hidden trauma problem.
The immigrant and first generation community especially carries trauma from where they came from and from coming here: the hardship of rebuilding their lives in a new culture. They’ve done so much to just survive - and now that they have, they’re finding themselves carrying all the feelings they pushed down to survive. Yet they don’t have tools to unpack the emotions, trapped in cultures where “saving face” and “eating bitterness” is the norm.
In the class I’m teaching, I share about how anger is a secondary emotion. Anger is protective - and underneath it is hurt, sadness and pain. To address the anger, we need to make space for the underlying emotions and original unmet needs.
In my extended family, there are angry older asian men, who are also hurting and sad men. Who ate the bitterness of workplace aggression and discrimination. Who came here for a better life, and found a harder one. Better in some ways, worse in others.
Who had a lot of pride and experienced blows to their pride that they translated into emotional and physical blows that temporarily gave them the feeling of control and power, where so much of their lives feels out of their control and where they felt powerless.
They are men who tried their best to provide financially but struggled to give the emotional support that they’d likely never received.
—
And I have a numbness problem.
I know from my education and training that numbness is a coping mechanism, similar to the freeze in fight/flight/freeze. I know from behavioral psychology that our reactions attenuate as we are exposed to the same stimulus. Desensitization.
I know that the human mind isn’t capable of holding all the pain and suffering that exists in the world for the 7 billion humans, accessible through my phone screen.
So what to do?
Processing | Writing this article was the first time I cried since the events this weekend, even though I’ve talked to people since. I have many other things to do on my “to-do” list and yet it felt important to sit down and make space for the feelings, even if “numb” was at the top of the feelings list.
Self-care | My therapist proactively reached out on Monday; I spoke with her today.
Resources | My friend, Ellie, created this processing tool for the Asian-american community, including an excellent matrix on page 3 that suggests actions that align with your emotional capacity.
The antidote: Kind Action.
Wednesday morning, I saw a post from an Asian-american social media influencer about ANOTHER Asian-american indie musician’s mother who has cancer, encouraging people to get their bone marrow tested in case there’s a match. The poster acknowledged there’s SO MUCH out there to grieve, and his approach is to focus on one issue, one person.
And something released inside me. A tightness around my heart unclenched.
When there’s so much fear, uncertainty, violence and anger out there, the antidote isn’t to ruminate on it and form a bunch of self-protective and defensive strategies against “them”, even though that’s what evolution and our animal brain tells us to do.
The antidote for violent action is loving, kind action. Focusing on what’s in your control. Focusing on the person in front of you.
It’s also doing the work to unpack the emotional baggage you have so that you don’t transfer and transmute it to others, in unconscious, subtle ways, and in bigger, violent ways.
I’m calling my parents.
I’m going to advocate for gun control reform. The stats are clear. Going to a festival, your work place, a movie theater, an elementary school, or a grocery store should not be dangerous. Consider donating with me to the work of Everytown for Gun Safety.
I’m choosing kindness to myself and kindness to others.
What one kind and loving action will you take today?
Link Summary
Nicholas Kristof’s Op-Ed: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/24/opinion/gun-death-health.html
Ellie Yang Camp’s Processing tool: https://www.ellieyangcamp.com/new-blog/when-tragedy-strikes-a-processing-tool-for-the-asian-american-community
Everytown for Gun Safety: https://www.everytown.org/
US Bone Marrow Registry: https://my.bethematch.org/s/join If you live in the US, consider registering to be a bone marrow donor, especially if you’re of asian descent or multi-racial - but even if you’re not! Because you can be a bone marrow donor match even if you’re not the same ethnicity.
Things I’m working on
My class! 36 essays each week to read and respond thoughtfully to.
Staying physically healthy, financially healthy (AKA managing my spend while on sabbatical) and emotionally healthy (which has looked like a LOT of watercolor and funny movies)
Things I’m not working on: SO many things. :)
Things I’m reading/listening/doing:
Listening Rec | Will Smith’s autobiography on audible. An illuminating insight to his own childhood trauma, his parents, the work he’s done to understand the masks he took on as a child, the coping mechanism of humor.